Friday, May 07, 2010

The Ivy League Bubble

Your Captain is largely self-employed. It is because of this he greatly appreciates your contributions. However, because of his self-employed nature (and his rebellious psychological handicaps which prevent him from becoming a cubicle slave), he needs to put food on the table and therefore has to come up with new ideas and ventures. Most of these (like his attempts to court women) fail. But because of the sheer volume of attempts made, I do inevitably succeed (in both work and the ladies).

However, your Captain is working on something very big. And by very big, I mean Gru attempting to steal the moon big. If funding is received for it, I will have to employ people and executives and probably a lot of them, however;

NONE of them will be Ivy League graduates.

And NONE of them will be MBA's.

The reason why is so blatantly obviously, that perhaps it needs explaining.

First, look at our beloved president. Barry is a Harvard graduate. Not a great marketing campaign. "Hey, look, I graduated from Harvard! I'm so smart, I spend $1.4 trillion more than we take in EVERY YEAR!"

Second, if you are on the other side of the political fence, Bush Jr also a Harvard graduate. Not a great marketing campaign. "Hey, daddy, give me money so I can run an oil company and a baseball team into the ground!"

Third, if you look at the

housing bubble
dotcom bubble
Savings and Loan scandal
Asian currency crisis
Enron and the accounting scandals

and pretty much every major economic disaster in recent history it is caused by two general groups of people;

Ivy league graduates

and

MBA's

(sometimes both)

Now who am I to claim this? I went to some crap state college and paid my way through. I don't make more than $30,000. What the hell do I know?

Well, I'm an entrepreneur. And like all entrepreneurs we fail miserably for the most part. But inevitably we break through with something. We come up with something that is so big, "it will blow this pyramid thing out of the water." And when we succeed, it is not GW taking his daddy's money and buying a baseball team. Nor is it Barry Hussein taking his grandmother's money and writing books about himself. It revolutionizes economies and entire industries and it is the Ivy leaguers that work for us. Not the other way around. And the reason why is that Ivy leaguers and MBA's are not trained to think or be creative, they're not even trained to obey. They are trained to work the system. They are trained to simply be one thing and one thing only;

Rent seekers.

Don't believe me?

Look at GE.

That entire corporation is pathetic to my smallish LLC. Why?

I don't need to force through legislation that the entirety of America buy my light bulbs. I produce something of value people want.

Goldman Sachs anyone? Matter of fact the entire bulge bracket. They can't get it up unless the government bails them out. Hmmm...so they hire from any place outside the Ivy League?

Look at all of K street. You think lobbyists exist because their company makes the best product the people want? No, they exist because corporations figured out it's more profitable for them to bribe elected officials to enact laws that give them an unfair advantage over their competitors. So instead of developing the latest and the greatest, it becomes fighting over the remains of a stagnant economy.

Of course what happens is the "old" economy while wrapped up on politicking and bribery and law suits, loses its creativity and vitality to the "new" economy where younger whipper snappers come up with ideas that obsolete the old economies, turning them into worthless bankrupt entities over night. Regardless, understand the MBA's and Ivy Leaguers can only exist and survive in a cronyistic and corrupt environment. And not only will those environments inevitable fall to new ones, the new industries that do come about are going to look at the Ivy League's "product" and MBA's and say, "Good lord, why in the Patron Saint's Name of Frick are we going to hire these charlatans?"

Thus the collapse of the education bubble, particularly the Ivy League.

Understand this and understand this well. It may not happen tonight. It may not happen tomorrow. But until MBA's and our precious "best of best" Ivy Leaguers start actually proving their worth (or perhaps just stop destroying the economy every 5 years or so), the real capitalists and entrepreneurs are going to get wise as to what a scam it is hiring these overpriced dolts. And when this epiphany hits (and also assuming our great Harvard-educated leader can get the economy growing significantly again - ha!) the demand for MBA's and Ivy legaue degrees will have so dried up, that the likes of Yale and Harvard are going to be synonymous with "The University of Phoenix" and "Rasmussen Business College."

Enjoy the decline!

17 comments:

Jay said...

Thank you for this article Captain Capitalism!

I am one of the many struggling Undergrads (2.45 GPA and slowly growing) thanks to my abysmal High School education that prepared me for welfare due to:
"No Child Left Behind",
Unions and corrupt School boards,
Zero-Tolerance policies (aka Give Bullies all the power and throw the victim that fights back in kiddie jail),
and a failing education due to Political Correctness.

I went to NYC after High School and studied acting (Best Mistake I made in my life, as it woke me up to the reality that there is a fantasy world [where most people live in] and a real world [where people like you live in]) After that I decided to work on Wall St. (Great job, but realized the party was going to crash in a year). So I left NYC and went back home and I enrolled in community college struggled through but was able to get into a well regarded state college, where I'm majoring in Economics (wanted business, but after seeing some of the people in Business School and reading this article I'm glad I didn't) and strangely enough I find Math and Economics my favorite subjects now, because they are the only subjects where There is no Liberal Bias or Political Correctness. Just do the math and get the answer.

This article really makes me happy. Keep up the good work, and I'd love to work for you, if you are okay with someone who had less than stellar grades.

P.S
If you are going to do an article on the wastefulness in the ĆŽdukation Sistem...I experienced it in High School. $1 million dollars (in a city where the median income was $29,000) to install CCTV cameras THAT DONT WORK. I spoke to my guidance counselor after one of our numerous "bomb threats" and she told me they don't stock film in the camera's after I asked "why couldn't they find the perp by using the CCTV footage"....I just looked with a stun on my face at the ridiculous waste.

By the way..the recent Tax Levy in my town failed to pass....Ha Ha Ha!

Anonymous said...

Love the phrase "Patron Saint's Name of Frick". May I suggest the Patron Saint be named "Saint Fumuci"... meaning "F**k Up, Move Up, Cash In".

As a corollary to your postulate, let me say that McKinsey is the root of all evil. If you look at many of the big business cluster-f**ks, more often than not there's an ex-McKinsey executive consultant behind it.

Anonymous said...

Do you have any idea what fraction of the people doing worthwhile tech startups, science, technology, etc. attended MIT, Harvard, Stanford, etc.? It's pretty high, and the product of many things: immigrants who really value the brand, superior technical instruction, access to resources, and meeting other great people.

I agree that the wealthy -> yale -> mba -> sinecure track isn't going to work in the future, but I wouldn't count MIT, Stanford, and the best of the ivies out.

Captain Capitalism said...

Anon,

Duly noted and agreed. There is however a difference from a computer science majoring MIT grad and a moron who majored in "international studies" at Harvard...one produces something of value, the other becomes president.

GW South said...

Look at all of J street. You think lobbyists exist because their company makes the best product the people want?

Not many lobbyissts exist at all on J Street, seeing as it doesn't exist Captain. You mean K Street, L'Enfant skipped over the J's when he was designing the city.

Great post though.

sth_txs said...

MBA's are trained to be stupid when it to economics. They don't cover any Austrian school stuff, and many put it down. I've interacted with some on other forums and find them to have more in common with Lenin as opposed to Jefferson.

Anonymous said...

I recall reading about study that showed an inverse relationship between the number of Harvard MBA's employed at major corporations, and their actual performance.

Chris said...

Dear Cap'n.

There is a huge difference between credentialism and street smarts or entrepreneurship.

I'm credentialed to the Nth degree. Needed for my trade. I'm good at it. I'm useless at starting busineeses.

My kid brother -- who has no qualifications -- can sell and develop products. That keeps him employed (his boss does not care about the number of letters because my brother generates business).

In technical areas, credentials and continuing education count. But in developing businesses -- they don't. The problem is that many in the USA are looking at the degree (TM) as proxy for ability.

This has never been true. An elite degree used to mean that you were in the elite club: useful for lobbying but not income generation.

Most if not all college students should learn a useful trade. The bubble will burst, and soon.

Gx1080 said...

Ivy Leaguers are the US aristocracy. With everything that implies.

Anonymous said...

The real purpose of the MBA is to show that a person has been socialized into a certain managerial worldview. Its no mistake that the people who run Big Government and the people who run Big Business all come from the same schools, all believe the same things.

Unknown said...

Cap whats the idea,i know lots of PHDs (Poor Hungry and Determined) including me that might be able to help

Captain Capitalism said...

Well my fine PhD friend, it's literally that good of an idea, that I refuse to tell people what it is. The only thing that would destroy it, is ignorance. Which there's plenty of, which means, I have to keep it tippy top secret.

That being said, IF I get financing (and that's a HUGE if) you will need to contact me because Cappy Cap will be the first and foremost of recruiting grounds.

Just don't get your hopes up. We need to get financing from other people and just like book ideas, it's hard to get a backer.

Unknown said...

My opinion is split on this issue, there are good arguments that both support and refute an education bubble.

I've been following this debate on Twitter for a while now, this was the first article that really got the notion going: http://tcrn.ch/hO3lKU I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Peter Theil yet.

Anonymous said...

As I lawyer I'm not real keen on Ivy law grads. They tend to be good at esoterica, arrogant, and a bit lazy. That's sort of a bad combination for actual, day-to-day practical legal work, which requires a good understanding of concrete facts, a humble knowledge that there are a lot of unknowns, and tons of hard work. Give me a striver from a top 30 school any day...

Anonymous said...

I wasted years at uni too Cap. Now I am working towards becoming an entrepreneur. I just wish I had known what I know now when I was in HS then I would have dropped out and gone straight into a useful job to gain experience that would help me start my own business.

Anyway, good luck with your start up Captain. Don't let lack of capital be your sticking point, there are other ways of getting money. Hell, do you even need as much start up capital as you think?
Good luck, and if you are really determined to see this succeed then it will, regardless of start up capital or not. In my research of entrepreneurs it seems the deciding factor between the average and the great is stubborness.

- Breeze

RB80 said...

I don't think you should completely rule out Ivy League grads. Ivy schools, like any other school, have their share of brilliant and dumb students. You just have to watch out for those who feel entitled. I would say there are also many who are humble, hard-working, practical, and entrepreneurial - the qualities you are looking for.

My comment is not influenced in any way by the fact I attended an Ivy. :)

Anonymous said...

Current Ivy League student, and I'm here to say that every word of your post is truth. The status quo of credentialism promotes well-connected, incompetent asses by virtue of an Ivy degree. American aristocracy is an understatement. And yes, I'd love to drop out and be a real entrepreneur.